Nagra Plunkett, Staff ReporterWESTERN BUREAU:
A TOP-LEVEL investigation has been launched into yesterday's predawn attack in which a gunman shot and killed two men and injured four others at the Nubian Construction site at Barbican on the outskirts of Sandy Bay in Hanover.
At least two of the six victims have allegedly fingered their attacker as a policeman, who they say was dressed in blue denims and combat boots.
"There was a fire first and when the men ran out of their bunkers (sleeping quarters) to put out the blaze. They saw a police car outside the gates and it drove off," an employee at the site told The Gleaner.
"Shortly after they drove away, a man come and beat pure shot pon we," he continued. "Some of the man dem hide and others coming out to see what going on pick up shot too."
Investigators have identified the dead men as 43-year-old Desroy Simms, a carpenter, believed to be of a Falmouth address in Trelawny and a Haitian national Alberto Dundee, 42 year-old watchman of Barbican, Hanover.
'UNFAIR TO BLAME POLICE'
Assistant Commissioner of Police Charles Scarlett, head of the Area One police
division, who was early on the scene, addressed the angry workers, who were laying the blame for the shooting on the police.
"It is unfair for the workers to be accusing the police of involvement until the proper investigations have been completed," he told them.
Police sources said it would not have been unusual for a police vehicle to have been seen near the site as they were under instructions to pay special attention to the area.
Police reports are that at about 1:30 a.m. a gunman entered the construction site and set fire to a quantity of lumber in the courtyard while workmen slept. The men woke up and were in the process of extinguishing the flames when the gunman opened fire on them.
The gunman left and went to two cabins where he shot five men. The assailant then went to the adjoining premises, which houses the Island Concrete Premix plant and gunned down Dundee.
Six 9mm spent shells were recovered from the crime scene. Residents in the area claim that a disproportionate number of workers from Kingston are employed at the site. They say that since their arrival at Barbican nearly a year ago, there has been a high number of gun-related violence.
But the prominent Kingston-based Nubian Construction Company has also suffered from this violence. Balvin Green, a 33-year-old contractor working with the company, was shot and killed during a robbery in Sandy Bay, Hanover in November.
INTERROGATED BY COPS
Last Tuesday, eight construction workers were picked up and interrogated by the police, following allegations that they were responsible for a number of recent shootings in the area. They were released the following day after the police found that, "their records came up clean."
Five persons have been killed in the parish since the start of 2005, and a total of 14 homicides were recorded last year.
